


For Lo! My Own Shall Come to Me

by garnettrees



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Childhood, Childhood Memories, Disturbing Themes, Dogs, Dom/sub Undertones, Dreams, Dreamsharing, Emotional Manipulation, Empathy, Hannibal is Hannibal, Hopeless Romantic But Not A Very Nice One, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, Law Enforcement, M/M, Magical Realism, Mindfuck, Murder, Nightmares, Poor Will, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Hannibal, Power Dynamics, Psychic Bond, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Burn, Soulmates, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unhealthy Relationships, Well maybe a little, is dark and creepy romance a tag?, questionable child-rearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:43:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garnettrees/pseuds/garnettrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1375.html?thread=71775#cmt71775">this prompt</a> from the hannibalkink meme. Basically: "Hannibal/Will. Soulmates. Your 'soulmate' is always perfect, able to understand you, and provide for your needs. Will's empathy is to ensure that he can see Hannibal's perspective." </p><p>If there is some cosmic order, a weaver at the loom of fate, there is absolutely no guarantee the master pattern is a safe or rational one. It can, however, be beautifully outré. </p><p>Will was born to see the design.</p><p> </p><p>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So… remember how I wrote "Night Ocean" for XMFC, and was all in a flutter about how dark it was and when I should pick up my ticket for the express train to hell? _Yeah_. I blame Mads Mikkelsen for being excessively creepy, pretty, correct and… and.. NORDIC! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Not that I would ever have a weakness for intelligent, empathic, emotionally distressed blue-eyed boys, either. Not me.  Anyway, I've written Hannibal!fic, which I think counts as automatic bingo on the Going to Hell score card. Based on [this prompt](http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1375.html?thread=71775#cmt71775) from the hannibalkink meme. Basically: "Hannibal/Will. Soulmates. Your 'soulmate' is always perfect, able to understand you, and provide for your needs.  
> Will's empathy is to ensure that he can see Hannibal's perspective." Does what it says on the tin, while hopefully remaining disturbing and relatively IC. *crosses fingers* **Trigger Warnings:** Every warning that could ever possibly be conceived in connection with Hannibal Lecter? Disturbing images, religious references, implied cannibalism, youthful sexuality. Unhealthy character traits. And a fluffy mongoose. ;-)

_Serene, I fold my hands and wait;_  
Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea:  
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,  
For lo! my own shall come to me.  
-"Waiting" by John Burroughs

 

Hannibal is thirteen when he first dreams of the boy who will become his most treasured possession. In that moment, by that first sight, he is ensnared-- and in the only trap capable of holding such a wild, cany and sophisticated monster as he. Fascination, intrigue (and yes, an odd sort of kinship)-- these are the materials of the snare, though he is by no means docile under its yoke. Indeed, his violent passions are even more aroused. He is as a wolf, who may forget hunger when driven to mate. Or, perhaps-- looking at the pale, almost opalescent skin of this boy-- as a sculptor may forego food when he has found the best moon-pale marble in which to fashion his vision alive.

 

He stands in the bleak, listless courtyard, behind the building which was once a monastery. Now it is the Saint Anthony School for Foundling Boys, and a desultory snow has come to lace its crumbling walls and cobblestones. Hannibal knows it is spring in the waking world but, oddly, this inconsistency does not annoy him. He has has eyes-- and thought-- only for the slight figure standing beside the dry fountain. The boy is looking down and away, little swirls of dark, curly brown hair falling to obscure his face. His lips, which can be seen, are the heady pink of new cherries (which the human child Hannibal once was very much enjoyed). Shoulders at once drooping and curling in protectively, he stands barefooted, almost at parade rest, utterly unapologetic for the fact of his existence. He is focused on something Hannibal cannot quite see (a flash of red cardinal in the bushes?), which is completely unacceptable. Clad only in brief pair of blue-twill shorts, the delicate tracery of veins and twitching of chill skin is like the finest tapestry. Hannibal went to bed hungry, as he often does in his supposed 'home'. It is not surprising that this fact should manifest itself in the dream, but it is not _quite_ the feeling embodied in the word. This sort of ravenous desire has no name for him, not yet, but it makes his mouth water all the same. 

 

This dream is remarkable in many ways, not the least of which the fact he is having it at all. Each night, Hannibal suffers to lay down in the pitiful dormitory bed (as all the other boys do) and listens to the tap-tap-tapping of the Matron's ruler against the many metal bars (as all the other boys do). When she has finally finished her patrol down the narrow isle between the bed, Hannibal even closes his eyes. His classmates subject him to relentless torture during the day, but they have learned better than to attack at night. Hannibal had taught them this; patiently, repeatedly, as one is obliged to do when training such dull beasts of burden. With liberal use of pain, too… for isn't pain the best teacher of all?

 

So he may lay there, night after night, confident that he will remain unmolested for the duration. He supplies his body with rest because it is required to function, but he very rarely dreams. And never like this, with such vividness and color, with all the sumptuous shade and decadence of the Sistine Chapel. That's Michelangelo, though, and Hannibal is quite convinced that Da Vinci is far more skilled at faces. If this ephemeral boy does not raise his head to exhibit a face worthy of one of Leonardo's studies, Hannibal is going to be exceedingly cross. And still, his new and silent companion does not acknowledge him, staring off into the distance as his fingers clench and flutter spasmodically. 

Gradually, the courtyard changes. Its edges blur, the walls confining it fade instead into tall, remorseless ebony trees that weft and warp at odd angles. Large, obscene things lumber in its unhealthy geometry. Stags with broken, bloodied antlers and the faces of screaming girls etched in their hides. Nameless heaps of muscle and teeth that open their jaws, revealing something that is either the defenseless white flesh and shimmering ruby beads of a pomegranate, or else the pink and quivering vulva of a human female. Hannibal cranes his neck a little, but will admit he does not have enough experience to accurately judge. Other things in the forest have even less coherent shape-- bloody, agonized, all of them-- has if their brilliant colors have been dashed with turpentine. They are dissolving even as the two boys watch, and it comes to Hannibal suddenly that his pale comrade is unflinchingly tracing their outlines with his fingers, looking on their unvarnished horror with perfect understanding.

_'Don't look up'_ , Hannibal thinks suddenly, because he is still young. Still a boy, not yet wholly confident in his ability to work his will upon the world, grind reality under his carefully polished heel. If this boy is in any way a disappointment, anything _less_ than what Hannibal thinks he is, there will come a terrible, destructive rage. Lecter will destroy him utterly, for having dared to stir even a single nano-second of… not hope, but anticipation.

 

He wishes again for the kind of sleep he has most often known, that silent, static darkness. His consciousness descends into a blind, almost alien holding pattern while he awaits the daylight in which he may prowl, and read, and watch and fight. He will even accept the nightmares of Mischa he once occasionally suffered. Hideous, nearly unbearable things-- all the more vile because they did not require that the sleeping mind elaborate or add elements. As absolute, true and verbatim records they were far, far worse. He has, however, learned to stare these horrible dreams down. Employing the same flat, vaguely predatory gaze that has served to alienate his peers, he looks unflinchingly into the eye of the maelstrom. By reducing the nightmare to its component parts

_(they ended her struggles by striking her with a rock. head wounds, as he has read, bleed copiously. the deltoid is a long, gamey muscle-- shaped like a _delta_, from the greek. here are the carotid and femoral arteries, draining the body as one drains juice from berries. and fat, adhering to the epidermis-- yellow and faintly viscous, who knew?)_

he negates their power. When they began to consume her, she ceased to be Mischa. _His_ Mischa; the thinking, feeling being fashioned like Eve to his Adam. Made very nearly in the same manner as he. 

Hannibal has severe doubts about the veracity and/or value of the beings he has been forced to keep company with since. The other boys are banal in their cruelty; the Dean's malice and vindictiveness stem from past impotence, a child-bully's rage. All of them are _densely_ stupid, gazing at the world with vacant, bovine eyes. 

 

As if sensing the direction and weave of Hannibal's thoughts, the boy looks up. His eyes are a peerless, glacial blue behind absurd glasses, his visage full of an innocent knowing that gives him something more than mere boyish prettiness. He is a Botticelli angel, face still round with traces of puppy fat. He is not what Hannibal might have imagined, or asked for (provided, of course, that Hannibal were the sort of person who would ask _anyone_ for _anything_). Infinitely more, instead; a youth whose very expression and curve of cheeks begged the world not to inflict pain, set with eyes that say he knows it will anyway. Those same eyes narrow now, looking at Hannibal. Assessing, measuring, looking for a way in. I can see your design, I can figure you out. Give me just a chink in the armor-- give me a fissure and a place to stand and I will crawl inside of you. 

Quite suddenly, Lecter knows this dream is showing him the first real thinking being he has seen since Mischa died. This boy, is of a higher order of evolution. As Hannibal is, though they are not of the same species. Surprisingly, the difference sits well with him; if they were the same, it would be boring, and there is nothing Hannibal loathes like being bored. This boy is an invitation-- open and emotive and nearly naked, he looks as if he could be carried off by Grendel or Der Erlkonig, but neither of them will get the chance. 

 

In a quick, liquid motion, Hannibal darts forward and seizes the boy by the upper arms. The skin is chill with winter, but he can sense the warm pulse of life beneath. His grip is by no means gentle, nor is it exactly rough. Instead, takes hold of the other with all the confidence of possession-- this boy is _his_. The other child looks startled, but makes no move to get away. Hannibal thinks that he will bite him on that pale, smooth neck. Not the way a lion does, using jaws to asphyxiate or rend, but like the canine-- taking hold to dominate. Someday, Hannibal knows, he will no longer be at the mercy of his stupid, hollow tormentors. He will wreck hell and vengeance all over their world, with its pretenses to morality and polite little ritual. He will play by the rules only as far as it allows him to remain undetected, to win the game. Then, he will have this boy. 

This boy, who is looking at him with interest, even as Hannibal thinks very obvious thoughts of beautiful coasts to raze and armies to set out for conquest. Those blue eyes seem to shimmer, and the taller boy thinks that they are tears. No matter, he will lick them up, for they are his as much as any other part of this prize. But then, with all the sudden jumpy pastiche of the dream world, he realizes that the boy-- his pale boy who outshines the snow-- is melting. In this manner, the form vanishes, never once exhibiting any fear or concern, only watching itself flow away. Carefully observing, to the end.

 

There is only a little, dull gray morning light when Hannibal opens his eyes. He is in the same stiff, orderly position in which he fell asleep-- feet level, legs straight, turned smartly on his back under the scratchy uniform blanket. Around him, the old monastery is silent, but for the creaks and rattlings and bird-sounds of any ancient building. The other boys are sleeping, still in that monochrome country before true dawn. They breathing is a single pervasive rhythm, like livestock having bedded down for the night. 

Having experienced this unusual vision-- after night upon night of endless void-- Hannibal's first emotion is not that of wistfulness, or despair, or even annoyance. What he experiences is a profound, tectonic wrath. He bites it into his own forearm, thinly clad though it is in cotton sleep-shirt. He bites and bites and bites again, not breaking skin (though he _could_) but giving physical form to what wants to be a scream of inarticulate rage. That boy is _his_, a real and beautiful and intelligent creature that he will dissect in aching avarice and, with tender savagery, stitch back together. He detests having things that are his taken; he detests being forced to acknowledge that, for now, he cannot have what he wants.

Slowly, he comes back to himself-- reminds himself of proper appearances, of making sure all the elegant little details are in place. The clothes make the man; the leopard is defined by his spots. He has already begun adopting trappings of human sophistication, simply because those around him possess it not. Hannibal will author, with unflinching exactitude, a treatise on what he thinks of the vacuous beings around him. He will do it in their own blood. 

( _flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. this is my body; eat of it, drink deep._ )

There is a little more sleep to be had, and after that breakfast, and lessons, and all the routine of schooling to be endured. In the evening, he studies whatever strikes his voracious fancy. Then it will be time for bed, and darkness, and then to get up and do it again.

 

It is said that the Devil has more patience than the tide. In turn, the sea itself can clearly afford entire eons, as it erodes away the the continents holding it prisoner.  
All of these things will cease their machinations only after the world is cast into oblivion.

 

Hannibal can wait even longer than that.

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I need my head examined. ;_;
> 
> But, I have to thank you for taking the time to read my story. I very much appreciate it, and if I could bother you just a little more to comment, I'll be forever in your debt. Eternal gratitude also goes to the amazing and inspiring OP. Hopefully I'll actually have the _chutzpah_ to write more of this. ^^


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: First of all, I can't thank you guys enough for the awesome feedback! I really, really appreciate every single person who took the time to comment, bookmark, leave kudos… you should all get big, rich ice-cream sundaes from a pitcher Hannibal has never been within a nine mile radius of. ^_~ Hopefully, I've managed to keep the ball rolling in terms of tone and plot. This chapter is a little longer than the last-- but the first real meeting is at the end, promise! A little short, maybe, but I want to linger over that first breakfast in the next chapter. *crosses fingers*
> 
> As always, I really value you taking the time to read my story. If I could trouble just a bit more to leave feedback-- of any variety-- I would be very much obliged. ;-)
> 
>  **TRIGGER WARNINGS:** Violent and/or disturbing imagery. Religious references, passages that could be interpreted as under-age sexuality. The fact Hannibal has no respect for human life. Smitten sociopaths. Tiny!Will has a smart mouth.

Hannibal dreams of his boy twice more before their paths cross in the physical world. For the most part, he dismisses these visions . Even as a child, the inchoate brother-creature of before, his capacity for belief was always astonishingly small. Now it has dwindled so as to be-- for all practical purposes-- non-existent. 

So, Lecter does not believe his boy is real-- though, to be fair, he doesn't sincerely believe anyone is real. Actual beings possessed of physical matter, yes. He is not delusional, after all. It's just that they are ever so… _unimportant_. He can imagine their motivations, can read and manipulate their emotions and reactions with ease. He can even deconstruct their simian minds, which leads him-- with delightful and irreverent irony-- to psychiatry as his vocation. The one thing he cannot bring himself to do is empathize, invest, or even care. If he helps a patient heal, then it is for them to live on as an example of his skill, and a means to bolster his reputation. If he does not (and sometimes, he very deliberately does not, though not in any obvious way), well… In his profession, not everyone can be saved, and he is not quite held to the same level of accountability as, for example, an oncologist or a surgeon. 

He studies philosophy and sneers at it, though it has its uses. The same goes for religion, and even psychiatry itself. Nor does he have any patience for the maniacal ravings of tyrants and despots, the political movers and shakers. After all, a desire to rule implies that there is, in fact, something that makes humanity worth ruling. 

So, the dreams cannot be signs or portents; he slays them as such with his very lack of credulity. Nor do they stem from any outside stimuli. They correspond with none of the momentous occasions in his later life, nor with physical illness, or any sort of distemper. (This must also, however, take into consideration the fact that-- as Hannibal grows into manhood-- his primary response to almost anything is boredom.) He kills for the first time, and perceives no disruption in his repose. The overwhelming majority of his nights are still spent in blackness. Or, as he begins to have truly full and satisfying meals, a sort of deep red. It is not quite the shade of arterial blood with which he has made so happy an acquaintance; there is a midnight to it, an undertone of depth but also of illumination.  
Bloodlight, he thinks of it-- and he finds it quite soothing, indeed.

 

His is an existence almost entirely free of mental tension. He feels at ease-- perhaps briefly 'content'-- when absorbed in his particular culinary arts, or bent over his sketchbook. It is killing that brings the world into prismatic color, whole vistas of experience and instinct that had remained unknown and unguessed before that first wonderful ravaging. And, of course, the manipulations of others has its own, subtle charms. These dreams, however infrequent, are irritating in part because they inspire a less familiar pleasure. One which anticipates greater ecstasies still. He would be shut of the visions altogether, and thus refuses to give them any conscious consideration. 

No one is more ruthless than Hannibal when it comes to excising what displeases him.

* * *

  


_(The dreams remain, however. A trio of dark jewels in the shallow pool of bloodlight. As plump and startling and mouth-watering as pomegranate seeds served on china of real human bone._

_See, here, the second: A dark forest of emerald, a labyrinth of impossibly verdant trees which sunlight has never and will never pierce. In a way, it reminds Hannibal vaguely of summer spent in Breton, but it is too cool in the shade, implying a warmth in the outside climate. In a sighing quiet, the wood promises that anything beyond its borders will never be revealed. Hannibal is not perturbed by this-- he knows it is a dream, and stands placidly. His patience is that of the earth, waiting once more to be fed with open graves of corpse and charnel._

_The trunks of the trees are made of ebony, though they quiver like muscle freshly cut. They are for the most part unadorned but, every now and again, there are faces etched into the 'bark', in various stages of decomposition. On a handful alone, tawdry figures of Christ in his final agony are impaled. White plaster, gold filigree-- gaudy in the extreme. The young Mr. Lecter (already a student at the University of Paris), breathes out through his nose. It is the only physical sign that his irritation is on the rise._

_The trappings are an effrontery to his sense of aesthetics. And yet, there exists within the entire scence some odd vividness, an honest _abnormality_ that elevates them beyond mere props of what the great, vacant masses term a 'nightmare'. Anyone else would perceive this 'wrongness' as 'evil'. Lecter remains in part curious, but mostly unmoved. He has use for the duality of good and evil only as an amusing toy. A mirror-box with which to confound and frighten others. There is a beauty in true evil-- like Dore's cast-out Satan-- because evil is defiant._

_Oh, but the imagery can be so very _useful_! Is his own boy not a breathlessly lovely archangel, Michael with his sword in the unwholesome wood? The familiar boy-- for still, he is a boy-- steps out from behind the malignantly lush vegetation. He cannot be more than a few years older than the first time Hannibal saw him, but he seems now to be more… _present_. The seductive fallacy of the dream is to think he might some day be an embodied thing, as the child Hannibal once wished. Still slim, clad in battered jeans and a t-shirt that clearly belongs on a grown man, the other is painted liberally with smears of oil and further… traces of rough labor. The glasses are remain ridiculous, the face blasphemously beautiful. It's like seeing Michelangelo's David reduced to a mere paperweight. Those blue eyes dart about-- it would be easy to think the child nervous, save for his stride. He is unapologetic; afraid, but also unwilling to be moved._

_'There is a design,' the other whispers. His voice is so soft Hannibal cannot get a real sense for the sound. 'See it. Understand it. Take it apart.'_

_"Will that make you safe, then?" Lecter asks. His tone is light, prosaic-- almost cocktail conversation. The boy looks up sharply, maintaining eye contact just long enough to truly register the other visage, before looking away. He sways a little, bites those delicious bruise-red lips. Something about him folds in on itself, for protection, but his very presence in the forest is a challenge. When it becomes clear he will not speak, Hannibal continues, "It is rude to keep others waiting. Ruder still, to refuse conversation."_

_"I can't possibly have kept you waiting," the boy replies, with the careful diction of one already working to hide an accent, "because I wasn't looking for you." His voice is like a sighing note on a violin, in spite of the faint twang-- it will get deeper, with time._

_Hannibal chuckles, almost honestly, "Then what are you looking for?"_

_The child does not share his amusement. The foliage around the smaller form seems to increase in its unhealthy luxuriance; the play of shadow and sound within the wood indicate some fatal error in dimension and perception. All at once, the academic knows the garish Christ-trees belong to his companion. The other has brought them into this dream world with him, though they clearly disturb and upset him. Giving them wide berth, he attempts also to skirt a wide parameter around Hannibal. He seems willing to endure the more lunatic aspects of the forest instead, but the undergrowth does not give him much room. He is several arm-lengths out of reach,and Lecter allows him this illusion of safety, for the moment. The Christ figures begin mutely opening and closing their mouths-- making silent screams that put one grotesquely in mind of goldfish._

_"I was looking for a way out," the boy says shortly, taking slow, deliberate steps._

_"And if there is no way out?"_

_"Probably there isn't." The acknowledgement sounds more cynical and exhausted than the youth has any right to be. "But I'll look. And dreams gotta end, eventually."_

_"Common wisdom," Hannibal concedes. The serenity of the other remains him of portraits of saints-- serene in their suffering. Surely this cannot be so. Smoothly, he lets his words paint what, for him, is a very desirable scenario indeed. "Perhaps this is my dream. As such, I could prevent it from ending, and keep you here."_

_Oh, _there_ is that delicious fear, turning those pale eyes indigo! Alive from within, too, an ember of indignation._

_"I really, really wish you wouldn't." Any other child would at least say 'please', but not this one. Instead, he listens as a young buck in its first spring-- unsure of the wood, but at home there. Mirroring the first dream, his hands spasm, but now in tight expansions, as if his palms are burning. Little rivulets of garnet-- pigeon's blood-- crown his pale, high forehead._

'He feels too much,' _Hannibal thinks, fascinated. To be entranced and repelled by evil is not an unknown condition. Rarer still, however, is to experience the pull and draw with perfect understanding._ 'He does not get to pick and choose…' _And that is awesome, in the old sense of the word. Full of awe, and the possibility for ecstasy, and fear._

_The backdrop of the dream has now acquired a quality of alienation suggesting, breathlessly, that all of these prosaic things are a ruse. That behind each tree, each bump of moss (is that a toadstool of glittering crimson, there? new fungi clinging to the bark in the shape of children's teeth?) is something more alien still. The boy shivers, forces himself to keep his breathing regular._

_"You do not have to be afraid," Hannibal tells him, coating the lie in honey. He would protect this boy from all others, but also brand him with a stigmata of Lecter's own choosing; hold him close and breathless, smother his screams. With all his practiced gentility, he holds out a hand, gesturing with the other toward a fallen log. "Come, sit by me. You will be safe from any others."_

'But not from me' _remains unspoken, but that alters nothing. The boy gives him a look so frank and dubious as to give a hint of what the grown man will look like. Thick glasses slip down the pert nose, eyes looking over the rims._

_Just as Hannibal decides he will not wait, will peel away all the pathetic vestments of a life that is so obviously incapable of appreciating this little morsel-- there is a loud crash in the underbrush, a flash of painfully white antlers, and nothing._

_Nothing save the thought that, for the barest moment, he had seen the boy lift his hand a little, as if he were about to reach back.)_

* * *

  


Hannibal, in the staggering subtlety and strength of his full maturity, is a man of great taste. Cloth of only the finest quality, cut of only the most decorous style; cuisine with the same passion an artist might feel for their model. Color only of suitable palette, music that is the auditory equivalent of fine crystal. He is agonizingly precise, in the last detail. In Paris, an art professor once called him a 'painfully exacting realist'. Probably she intended to damn him with faint praise, but Lecter received it utterly as a compliment and gave her a dashing smile full of straight, white teeth. His attention to detail is precise, and painful-- usually for other 'people'. He does not think of them as true beings, any more than he thinks the act itself as 'murder'. Killing, yes, as a hawk may spear a mouse in the field. Slaughter? Very possibly-- there is a kind of unholy divinity in that moment, reaching in to palpitating organs and _ripping_. Never the less, his concealment is perfect. He has awards and laurels from much of the Ivy League; his name inspires awed whispers at his _alma mater_. The government itself has consulted him more than once. To serve and protect, indeed.

As he enters the ripe summer of his fourth decade, however, he begins to sense… a malaise. Faint, and fully understandable of a superior being in such company, but irritating never the less. His larder is full, his kills are perfect concertos, every meal is still satisfying, and yet… It cannot be articulated. Largely because Hannibal does not allow imperfection into his universe, but also because it is a thing without a name. _People_ feel 'restless' or 'unfulfilled', or-- heaven forbid!-- 'lonely', for whatever given value those words may or may not possess. Lecter is of a higher order, whole in and of himself, and therefore utterly without need for a companion. If there _were_ some other exactly like him-- a hypothetical twin-- they would almost inevitably rend one other to bits, each unable to stand the concept of not being absolutely unique. No, that isn't it. Not _quite_.

 

Actually, he is idly considering the prospect of murdering an FBI agent with knife and pencil. This one is large, broad-shouldered, and so utterly dependent on the image of himself as possessed of great strength that its really quite laughable. It would be lovely to decimate that column, bring the whole of structure of the agent's personality down in resounding rubble, before taking the parts for his next good meal. Or several-- the man is of prodigious size. Jack Crawford, however, saves himself just as Scheherazade did; with an unfinished story.

And so, on an utterly unremarkable day Hannibal allows himself to be ushered as a visitor down an utterly bland hallway. The office is a testament to dull, manufactured authority. Even the detailed crime scene photos, flow-charts, maps and victim profiles prove relatively uninteresting.

The boy, however… 

 

No longer boy, truly, but a man. Still possessed of coltish mannerisms, affecting something of a hunch-sprawl in the chair. The lines and planes of the face have narrowed a bit, shaped into a graceful if elusive nobility; half obscured under glasses, shadow of stubble on the chin, and a head of unruly curls. Hannibal would think it some phenomenal incongruity, if not for the brilliance the man exhibits in every word of his analysis. 

Will Graham, this creature is called. Fair enough, Hannibal allows-- what does one call a being possessed of pure empathy? Matyr, monster; sinner, saint. All of these masks and infinitely finer gradations flicker over that expressive face. Will Graham _hurts_, and it bleeds from him like music. He assumes, for brief flashes, a look of ruthlessness that would make pagan war-gods weep. And, as always, he is utterly unapologetic and unbowed.

"Don't psycho-analyze me," Will hisses, the moment the doctor tips his hand. He briefly enters Lecter's personal space while still barely meeting the doctor's gaze. As if he can _command_ Hannibal, as if he has anything of a choice. "You won't like me when I'm psycho-analyzed." 

'Quite the opposite', Hannibal thinks, as he patiently listens to Crawford tell him how _he_ thinks Lecter should do his job. He should be saved from the assumptions and uninformed opinions of mediocre mortals. Privately, he is very nearly entertained. 'Will' may be a fitting appellation yet; to be possessed of drive, of spirit. To impose will, forcing one's desires into being.  
"Good Will," he slips into the actual conversation, for he likes this last one best. To come in good spirits, with open arms. And how often does _that_ end well?

 

Still, he is not _entirely_ certain (something of a novelty in and of itself). He has no care for metaphysical concerns-- the nebulous 'whys' and mechanical 'hows'. If this is the boy Lecter saw first so long ago, then it as simple as that-- he has been made fact. Hannibal himself must, as always, proceed with the precision for which he is so famed. 

He impales the female carcass upon pilfered antlers, paying particular attention to the drape, the articulation of limbs. There is the hair, of course, and how the sunlight will play on her white belly and blood-flecked thighs. He smiles sharply to himself-- it is amusing to assume the role of artist in ardent, covetous pursuit of a new and wholly enthralling muse.

 

He will give his good Will a test.

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... *spreads hands, smiles sheepishly* Yeah, I really don't have any excuses. ^^;;; *passes out flashlights* As always, feedback is a wonderful, wonderful thing that makes me what to shower you in daisies and rainbows and candy.
> 
> ... I also apparently don't have any shame.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. Even I thought this had petered off into oblivion-- not because I wanted it to, but because I've had a lot of trouble writing in general lately. I've actually been sitting on (parts) of this since July, but I've been so nit-picky and prissy about it that I've never posted. I wanted to make it longer, so we could have some honest-to-goodness Hannibal/Will interaction, but by now I've realized that just staring at this isn't going to make it write itself. And, if I don't post it, there's always the chance I'll get frustrated and trash the thing. And then kick myself afterwards. X_x;; 
> 
> At any rate, I owe a huge thanks to **Epigone** for not only beta-ing this, but also for helping me organize a group-rewatch. There's nothing like going over scene after scene with a bunch of _Hannibal_ fangirls to get the old ideas flowing. Some of my ideas for where this is going have changed-- we may go intensely AU after 1x04 or 05. (Of course, I haven't gotten past the Breakfast Scene yet, so maybe I should shut up.) I _promise_ I won't take nearly so long for the next chapter. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: Brief religious discussion, gory imagery, Will Graham's mindscape in general. Brief mythological and literary allusions to incest.

When Will Graham wakes in the chill, unrepentant hours of predawn Minnesota, the vision of the raven-feathered stag is a thing entirely real to him. The actuality of the hotel room-- so discomforting in its sameness and anonymity-- seems a poor, pale backdrop for the powerful being emblazoned in his mind's eye. Graham is no stranger to phantasms; moments that are not his, flickering images of the quick and the dead. This one, however, is unusually artistic. Almost darkly ornate, it seems to syphon the strength of its existence from its own jagged lines, like a drawing come to relentless and impossible life. Will himself is possessed of an active and exacting imagination (some might say _preternaturally_ so), but he is also a man who knows himself. He must. The whorls and ridges of his internal fingerprints are the only way home-- essential cartography in the face of every Other he undertakes. 

The stag is not his. Shaking his head, Will tries to negate that fact even as he acknowledges it. Already he is feeling the strain of too much input. Not just the visual horrors, but the layers of suffering; the hideous joy in such suffering, and the grate of so many eyes on his own innocuous form. For a moment, his body and mind unite in stiffened rejection-- he will have no more invaders here. 

 

It's no use, though. The stag is a masterpiece of light and shadow, authored by a meticulous and ardent hand. To have the already small room filled with its imperious presence ought to feel frightening. Indeed, Will is hyperaware of visual darkness, his own pulse pounding in his temples and wrists. His body has all the physical indicators of panic-- he waits for the emotion to slot in place, warping his internal perception to match. Instead, he finds only a eerie stillness, at once beyond and just short of actual calm. Beyond that, however, is a far more vibrant sense of anticipation. It is as if, only moments ago, some god-like force struck a note-- a chord so sweet and familiar that even the corpses littering Graham's unconscious wasteland are compelled to bow in submission. 

_'Oh,'_ Will thinks in the sudden, miraculous stillness of his mind. _'Hello, you.'_

 

In the next moment, the last blurry vestiges of sleep have fled, and he has no idea what such a thought could mean. The other details of the dream unspool backwards, filling him with the same, almost-real time impressions from the Copycat's crime. The scene, not of Cassie Boyle's murder, but of her display. It was humiliation, as he told Jack, but it was also appropriation. The killer _confiscated_ her-- no longer a person, or even a body, but a conduit. _Raw material_ through which this new presence can express both his interpretation of Hobb's theme, and his own artistic superiority. 

 

Many of the more surreal aspects of the dream peel away, forgotten as Will bears witness for the fourth, the fifth time today. The stag stubbornly remains, however-- because it is much like the scene of the crime itself. Both are layered, deceptive… coyly intimating easy answers even as they smirk with disdain. It's tempting to accept surface similarities, especially when they dovetail so neatly with what others want to believe. The copycat is daring someone to look beyond the obvious, call him on his 'field kabuki'. After all, isn't that particular school of drama known for its stylized decadence? In this same way, Will knows the creature of dark brilliance

_(feathers of an elegant harbinger, antlers white as bone bleached clean by time)_

is no hasty subconscious prop. He knows this, and he forces himself still to categorize it with the mundane. The debris of a dreaming mind desperately trying to cope with the events of the previous day.

 

If there is a god-like force at work here, Will tells himself wryly, then it is Jack Crawford's professional ambition and drive. A frightening enough concept in and of itself. Sweeping in so carelessly, decimating every bulwark and neat border Graham has spent years erecting. Perhaps it isn't fair to interpret Jack's ruthless practicality as malice. Certainly, the newly-minted Special Agent is able to dismiss this notion intellectually; but, above all else, Will is aware of the dissonance between the layers of the mind… particularly his own. The gaps will only get larger, the longer he continues his plunge back into the field. 

_'In for a penny, in for a pound,'_ Will thinks, rolling on his back to stare at the featureless ceiling. Shadows and strips of dim light from the parking lot move across the white plaster, like some lunatic's idea of prison bars. And then, in keeping with Dr. Lecter's little 'game' (was that really only just a day ago?): _'Pound, schilling, six-pence, bullion. Pound of flesh, made fresh. Any other questions, Doc?_

It takes no special skill to know that the accomplished surgeon and psychiatrist would never tolerate such informal address. Lecter very neatly avoids being pompous, while still setting an expectation of the highest standards-- for himself, and everyone around him. Though their acquaintance has been of the briefest sort (and oh! does Will intend to keep it that way) the profiler cannot help the very strong impression and _presence_ of the other man. The doctor is all clean lines and appropriate palettes. From the dark, masculine cut of his suits to the almost wry jewel tones of the accents and tie, to say nothing of the careful and appealing grooming of his hair. 

Will tells himself there is nothing truly unique about this-- he has known his fair share of brilliant academics and sophisticated students of 'human nature'. Has seen them blinking at him from behind the safety of wire and glass, or peering down their noses at the soft blur of delta music in Graham's own voice. At this point, he is willing only to concede the swift skill of Lecter's verbal sparring... nothing else. Well, that and the fact he appreciates the deliberate tip of the doctor's hand

_('Who are you profiling, here? Who is he profiling, Jack!?')_

deft and hidden from Agent Crawford. He'd much rather know when he's on display, the oft-sought specimen of 'empathy disorder'. At least then, everyone knows where they stand, even if it is an insult to his professional pride.

 

_'Not a consultant on a case, but part of the side show,'_ Will thinks, without a trace of self pity. It's stark realism that motivates the narrative right now, blank and unforgiving as the ceiling he's currently glaring at. Half-heartedly, he casts his gaze about in general, just for variety. This room could be anywhere, with its uninspired hotel prints, the beige and spiritless walls. It _is_ everywhere, and nowhere at all. _'It's a damn shame I don't fit in a petri dish._

The last bit of wry humor is directed at himself-- the other half of his mind. He is forever within and without; simultaneously a part of the cacophony of living and immeasurably distant from it. He can step outside himself, the barest lateral movement that belays the vast infinities he traverses. It's not a learned skill-- if anything, he's had to teach himself not to do it. This unique perspective has afforded him many a criminal insight, but the one thing it has never allowed is the luxury of denial.

_(Except… but no. Hush.)_

 

He has felt himself to be alone almost as long as he can remember. In the middle of a crowded marina, on a bus full of rowdy children, or sitting next to his father in their beat-up old Chevy. The feeling of isolation is so familiar as to be almost a companion-- he only really notices it when others remind him. Beverly's brisk questioning, Alana's sad eyes. The way Jack seems to want to wield him like a blunt object. 

 

"Blunt object," Will mutters aloud, musingly. _'Hammer, ax, wrench.'_ He's stopping just short of mocking Dr. Lecter-- even the mere idea of the sophisticated gentleman seems to discourage going too far. Will is much better at taking pot-shots at himself. Hell, he'd best start practicing more, if Price and Zeller are going to be his colleagues. _'A wrench in the plans.'_

 

 

Just like that, all humor-- wry though it may be-- vanishes. The dark of the hotel room is at once empty and oppressive, like the intimate void of his dreams. Only the faint sliver of the moon, now visible in the furthest window, offers any sort of anchor. A crescent-- a horned moon, as so many ancient cultures saw it. Waxing now, almost the perfect arch for Diana and her bow; a goddess and her wild dogs on the loose. The hunt.

Their killer is a hunter. The _real_ killer, not this irreverent sorcerer with his sleight-of-hand. Lounds was crass enough to choose a name, _'the Minnesota Shrike'_ \-- and it's going to stick, even if she applied it to the wrong 'work of art'. 

The real Shrike is a like the woodsman of old stories, a rootless and solitary being. No pack mentality for he! Any family he's gathered around him, the trappings of middle-class success… they're just props. Owned, familiar, and utterly meaningless as a particular rock or blade of grass in a wolf's territory. All but one.

Their 'golden ticket'.

_('It's unforgivably lazy,' Lecter's accent intones, 'Mixing one's metaphors'.)_

'I can't hear you,' Will thinks back, disturbed by this unwelcome echo. Too knowing, too _intimate_, the breath behind the words stirring against vulnerable skin. That's a better image-- that of a small child, a girl of course, with her hands clamped tightly over her ears.

A girl. A _daughter_. Even if that isn't truly their relationship, it's how the killer thinks of her. Will, however, is confident it really is that simple. As simple as the stories in the stars. Lot and his daughters, clinging to one another in the caves outside of Sodom; Electra avenging her beloved father. 

The Shrike teaches his girl everything he knows. How to track and shoot, how to skin, tan, and even how to fish. And if the whole of civilization fell down tomorrow? Well, they would survive-- they would know how, they two.  
There just isn't room for anyone else.

 

Will could get lost here, so easily. Just wander away from his body and never come back. The Shrike's feelings for his daughter are at once complex, and as obvious as the oldest cautionary tales.

"Hey there, little red ridding hood," Graham half-sings, but it really isn't his voice now. "You sure are lookin' good." 

And she _is_, all grown up. Beautiful like a nuclear sunset, like relentless millennia-old dunes. He remembers her little-girl voice, those little piggies poking out as she shuffled along in her mom's high heels. Doesn't every little girl dream of marrying her Daddy some day?

Love and hunger; sex and death. The problem with little girls is that they grow up, and he can't love her the way he used to-- not any more. 

"Why?" asks a foreign voice inside the pendulum. The other one, the conduit; Graham. "What set you off?"

"Because," another voice answers, using the same throat, "she's going to leave."

 

Oddly enough, it is this thought that brings Will back to himself. That sense of aching loneliness, and the anticipation of worse yet to come. A part of his empathy still echoes with the killer's mindset-- _('if I kill her I can make her stay')_ \-- but he knows who and where he is, now. 

It seems faintly lighter outside, but there's no real trace of dawn. The standard-issue alarm clock is too far away to read without his glasses, so he lets it stay a red blur. Correspondence-school still-lifes peer down at him from their frames, nailed oh-so-helpfully to the walls. Bowls of oranges and sailboats. Crying clowns that look like they're screaming instead. 

And Will Graham, in his rented bed, with only the sound of his own heart. He lets out a slow, blustery breath and wishes for his dogs. He knows them all by sound, even the ones who prefer not to pile in bed with him; Simeon's baritone respiration, the way Theron whines in her sleep. The rhythmic pad-and-click whenever his pack moves around in the night. 

 

Biting his lip, Will puts his back to the window, and thus the world. He should make himself sleep at least a few more hours-- he'll be grateful, he knows, later on. In the deepest corner of the room, there's a dark shadow. It has just the right size and angles to be the Stag, if he let it.

"One dream, and you think you can be so familiar?" Graham thinks, already fading from waking consciousness. He's close enough to sleep that he knows he's lying to himself. The stag-- still half-formed, but very present-- snorts, as if to voice an affirmative.

 

_'You've seen me before,'_ it seems to say, reproach in its blood-ruby eyes.

Will buries his own gaze-- and every other sense-- in the perfect black of sleep, so he doesn't have to think about anything at all. 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +the song Will sings is "Li'l Red Ridding Hood" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, 1966.
> 
> As always, I am endlessly grateful that you took the time to read my story. If I could bother you just a little more to comment, I'd be very much in your debt. I'll take anything; a few words, a smiley face, body parts... the body parts don't even have to be fresh! ^_~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. I _know_. If no one remembers this story, I will not be surprised. I'm shocked my own self. I guess this is what happens when you spend an entire season being mad an Hannibal for killing Abigail, which turns out to be practice for when he really _does_ kill Abigail. (I realize this is Hannibal, after all-- I was pissy, not shocked. ^_~)
> 
> Seriously, I'm not sure where the inspiration for this went, but I'm glad it came back. And twice as long as any other chapter, too. New year, new season, new job for yours truly... *crosses fingers*
> 
> As always, any comments you should leave would make me very grateful. I appreciate you just taking the time to read my story! If I could bother you just a bit more for a few words or a kudos, I'd really appreciate it. <3
> 
> Shall we then?

The raven-feathered stag is right; Will has encountered it before. The man Graham has become is bluffing ( _lying_ ) for all he's worth. He has more luxury in this than he's willing to acknowledge when he's fully awake.

_'You've seen me before.'_

Yes. Only once, true, but let's not split hairs. A lie is a lie-- and so am I. 

'Honesty is the best policy' is one of the earliest aphorisms Will recalls from childhood, and that phrase itself is an obfuscation. A wide-ranging but ultimately childish joke-- ha! No one ever thanks Will for telling the truth as he sees it, and see it he does, since the earliest conscious memory. He is not the hybrid dowsing rod the psychoanalysts seek, or the great empathy dysfunction doctors think to tease out in brain-scans and hours of therapy. He is the magician whose devices are completely safe from discovery; they'll never figure out his tricks because they refuse to believe the truth.  
It isn't a trick at all.

 

Will sees, and must learn to un-see: the way the babysitter tenses when her boyfriend towers over her, that the teacher's pet is oh-so-sweet but possessed of sticky fingers. He knows the nice lady next-door isn't really all smiles and lemon meringue pie. She's sad in a way that can't be scrubbed off, though she keeps all her floors so beautifully polished. It's in the phantom scent of baby powder, the abortive motion her hand makes towards her belly when she sees other people's babies. She doesn't want his help though, for her face turns fearful and almost panicky when he states-- with the candor of childhood-- what is so obvious to him. He isn't doing anything wrong by looking, by paying attention, but try telling _them_ that. No one really wants to see anything-- themselves, or the truth. The babysitter doesn't want him to point out how many times her handsome football player has already said 'I'm sorry' and 'never again', any more than his teacher wants to know who really took all the milk-money. Faces turn away from him, looking caught and guilty and afraid. Skin flushing in mortification, or paling like bedroom curtains jerked tightly closed. On and on, as far back as he can remember. 

 

In Kindergarten, the teacher reads 'The Emperor's New Clothes' aloud, and Will's whole body tenses from wanting to stand up and shout.  
"Just keep your mouth shut!" he wants to say. "Just put a sock in it, before someone socks you." The little boy saw the Emperor's nudity and that was the truth, but Will knows the adults wouldn't be very happy when he showes them all for fools. 

He learns early on that there are Rules; he also learns that most of these rules are lies.

They say, "Treat others as you want to be treated."

_(When he gives others the space and quiet **he'd** want, they say he isn't friendly, that he isn't 'fitting in'.)_

Or the teachers intone, "Learn to share."

_(Will can't share, 'cause he doesn't have anything anyone would want to begin with. His treasures are fishing lures, indian-head pennies, bits of colored glass and broken mirrors he finds in his campground rambles. He keeps these in an old cigar box that still smells of cloves, along with folded pictures from National Geographic. Will likes the exotic landscapes, which are almost always empty of people; hot springs in the Alps, the aurora over Iceland, and great Moai staring sightlessly off the Easter Island coast. No one else likes these things, or even cares. Worse still, the bigger boys like to tear them up-- though they stop when Will somehow 'guesses' that Tommy DeBurke still pisses the bed. _

_Pa says, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Will nods wisely, as if this makes any sense, and doesn't share anything at all.)_

 

His dreams are as empty of people as the glossy photos he collects. No human expressions that require parsing for what he should and shouldn't know, no careful responses to calculate (he always tenses after he speaks, like he's lobbing grenades across enemy lines). The wind brings carries not a single voice; not the high-pitched taunts of his peers, or adults' sugary attempts to coax forth words. Will doesn't have much to say, so his nightly visions are quiet, too. In dreams, he wanders familiar and well-loved landscapes with no bedtime, supper, or darkness to impede him. The shores of Lake Michigan, where Pa likes to work in the ports during the summer; the wooded hollows (Pa says 'hollers') cut by creeks flowing off the Ohio River; fantastic mazes of Spanish Moss near the Gulf Coast. As long as you're near water, you've got a sure-fire way out. It's man's oldest and most reliable road, according to Pa. 

"That was true in 'Nam, Willie," he often instructs, chair tipped back as the setting sun catches in rings of cigarette smoke. "And it's true here, too. Land folks get themselves awful stuck."

Will loves the look of big rivers and the possibility they bring. He and Pa haunt flea markets all up and down the Mississippi as they head north in the summer, and Will gets to play with the gas station maps. Even better, he discovers a large, leather-bound atlas in a dusty crate at Trader Mike's. That self-same Mike is willing to throw it in with the motor Pa wants, if the payment is all cash on the spot. Will traces the lines like blue veins in his wrists. Here's the mysterious Nile, the mighty Danube, and the Rubicon of Napoleon's ruthless crossing! Pa shows him the South China Sea and the Me Kong Delta. Water ways are strategic, and Will sticks to them-- even in his dreams.

He traipses happily along many a sculpted riverbank, scrambling industriously through muddy brush and peering into still pools full of minnows. If he has companionship at all, it is that of Daisy and Coondog-- the golden Lab and mutt pups that so often ride (and sleep) with him in the bed of Pa's truck. Sometimes the dogs stick close by his side, growling or whining at any strange flickers in the deeper woods. Other times, he just hears the echo of barking song as they range ahead of him, scouting out trails and scents just as they do in real life. Will knows they're close by, though, and he's never afraid.

 

It's difficult to believe (or, for that matter, remember), but there was once a young Will who knew sleep as peaceful and uninterrupted. The world of dark possibility and unearthly colors behind his eyelids was not always a cage. But to remember that would not only be depressing-- it would be dangerous. For with pleasant recollection would come the memory of that first hail of fire against his precious fort. The envoy who came to Will's kingdom of cardboard boxes and stacked rubber tubs and-- like a horde descending from the mountains-- left nothing but devastation in its wake. Though the night terrors that came afterwards crept up slow, few and far between, that first was the portent of all things to come. A terrible angel of father's folk Catholicism; burning, always burning, with no softness about them. And, sometimes, chains. 

Like so many of the horrors in Graham's later life, it grows forth from the borderlands, where reality and perception blur. 

 

Will is six years old-- seven, at a stretch. In the dog-days of summer, Pa hunkers them down in a little motor court near Manistee National Forest. There isn't always dockside work to be had, but Pa is also a serviceable carpenter. A war buddy (one of many, but also one of the surviving few) has found a stint for Ol' Graham at a housing development going up in in Reed City. Pa hates suburbia-- has no patience even for towns (the exception to this being New Orleans because, Pa says, it _grew_ ). They always avoid putting up in urban places, if they can. 

As always, there are few other children near the motel to help Will occupy his time. That's just the way he likes it, thank you kindly.

 

In his memory, summer mornings are always dim, backlit with the coppery glow of the sun peaking through heavy motel curtains. All of these rooms have a vague sameness about them, though the layouts often change. Of the longest time, Will thinks there might also be Rules for these way stations-- a recipe for what a hotel room _should_ look like. Or else they are like a handful of legos, with a limited number of permutations to be achieved. The lamps with browning shades, the beds worn with grooves by bodies innumerable, the signs that say 'no cooking' in the room and 'pay by the week'. All of these things are consistent, so Will and Pa lead consistent lives within them. It's a bit like life in Vermillion Bay, where they put up in Louisiana for the winter while Will goes to school. He likes their little 'home base' just as well as any of the summer 'ports', though he never gets homesick and there is a definite advantage in not having school. 

Pa rises early, so that Will's half-waking dreams are usually of the older man's ablutions, the smell of black coffee, and the snuffling of the dogs as they leap in the warm spot left beside the boy. Sometimes, Pa chucks him gently on the shoulder if there's something to remind him of, but mostly he just ruffles Will's already sleep-mussed hair and tells him to mind himself until supper.

Will wakes in his own time, fumbling for his ungainly glasses and rolling out of bed. He helps himself to the cereal always left down within his reach, picking out the marshmallows before they get soggy. Daisy and Coondog are contentiously let out to do their business just beyond the parking lot, and they all watch cartoons with their respective chow. 

The whole day is spread before him with all the possibility of strange spires glimpsed in the far distance, so the lurid colors of _He-Man_ don't hold Will's attention for long. There's a great wooded area near the lodge which he has only just begun to explore, and today seems a day made for doing just that. Fishing a t-shirt and pair of jean-shorts from his rucksack, he spends a few minutes on the still-laborious task of tying his canvas gym shoes. Then, with the hotel room dutifully locked behind him, he and the dogs are off across the green separating the guest lodging and main office. Pa has been doing a few odd-jobs for the owner, in return for which his daughter is keeping a nominal eye on Will. The boy doesn't mind her much-- Amy is in high school, but she's a pretty even combination of kindness and plain sense. She's content to let him check in occasionally while she minds the desk, bent over a nursing textbook while she chews on the ends of her braid. Will appreciates not being spoken to in that discomforting, high-pitched tone so many adults effect. Amy calls him 'sport'. and has gone so far as to tell Will she wants to go to college in Chicago-- 'blow the sticks', as it were. If the already solidifying furrow of determination between her brows is anything to go by, there's a good chance she'll succeed. The morning, Will pops his head in just long enough to exchange greetings, and smile noncommittally when she says he's welcome to come down to the pool with her after _All My Children_. He realizes he's forgotten the little watch Pa got for him, but he's not in the mood to go back for it. The sun will tell him when it's getting time for supper, usually at a less-than-traditional four in the afternoon unless Pa is lucky enough to find overtime.

 

The woods to the north of the motor lodge aren't a part of the nearby National Forest, but they still represent a sprawling frontier for an enterprising young boy. Several unofficial paths have been worn through it by decades of hikers and pedestrians, and there are a few clearings that Will has already successfully scouted. There's also a watershed, slowed to a trickle from lack of rain and easy enough to cross if you're patient and don't mind damp feet. Daisy and Coondog barrel alongside him, splashing and barking, while Will tries to decide which direction to explore. Pa has taught him all about natural navigation for both day and night, so he finally sets out to the west, taking time to note anything interesting along the way.

For the most part, Daisy is happy to trot along at her young master's ankles, occasionally stopping to select a particularly nice stick, which she insistently presses into Will's hand. He plays fetch with her obligingly, but it's a forest full of sticks-- half the time she comes back, tongue lolling and brown eyes bright, having apparently decided her particular goal has vanished amongst the leaves and underbrush. Coondog ranges about in circles, nose twitching, trying to flush birds and critters from their sanctuaries in the buttonbush and checkerberry. He never catches anything but, in this one aspect, Coondog is a perpetual optimist. Smiling, Will continues on his journey, whistling Elvis' "Hound Dog" with his hands shoved contentedly in his pockets.

 

The day is rather warm, but the canopy of thick summer leaves makes Will's world into a dim land of peridot and citrine, dark tree trunks like columns in some ancient giant's castle. He finds the remains of an old stone foundation, exploring it with an archeologist's eye for detail even as he avoids the few bits of rusty metal and remaining rotted wood planks. The requisite beer bottles, litter, and faint traces of spray-paint are are also present-- "they" (and almost all adults, for Will, fall into this category of nebulous and unpredictable authority) probably knocked the place down to keep teenagers from partying. That's a shame, because Will would like to live in a place like this someday-- a cabin in the woods. He'd have room for all the fishing lures he liked and his own tool box, and maybe furniture made from polished split logs like the kind he saw at the Appalachian Heritage Festival. Daisy and Coondog will be there (he cannot yet conceive of mortality, let alone a time when they are not with him), and Pa can come visit and he'll have lots of other dogs, too. Maybe he'll wear a suede cowboy hat, like Clint Eastwood in _Hang 'Em High_. 

Most of the litter around the foundation doesn't interest Will, but there is one bottle with a bright, cavorting penguin on the label which makes him laugh. He's sorry to leave it lie but, while Pa doesn't have many rules about the 'treasures' Will is allowed to bring home, beer bottles are definitely a no-no. 

Not far from the ruins, Will finds a blueberry bush, decked in the pink, white and blue of fruit in various stages of growth. The fishbone pale ones are the babies-- Will thinks they look like the skin of a mer-person (it's really not fair that there are only girl mermaids), with their faint violet hints of what lies beneath the surface. The pink ones are older, and the blue ones are ripe, though the boy has been instructed never to eat any without Pa's say-so. All the same, he plucks up the ones that look like interesting marbles and puts them in his pocket to show off later.

 

His major find of the day, though, is a colony of tent caterpillars. There are hundreds of them infesting a tree on the edge of a clearing, weaving little silk paths along the limbs. Farther up, Will can see where they've begun constructing a huge, tent-like sheet of silk in which to do their molting. The resulting moths are fuzzy, brown, and relatively uninteresting, but the boy very much likes the look of the caterpillars. He likes their flash blue and yellow stripes, and the spots of black on each segment that make them look kind of like peacock feathers that have grown legs. Gently, gently, he trails a finger over one or two of them, enjoying the velvety texture and marveling at the iridescence of the blue markings. He laughs when they rear up on their back segments, as though trying to get a lay of the land. There's every chance they'll kill the tree-- or a female's brood will, when she returns to lay eggs as a moth. But the caterpillars keep trucking along in neat little lines, industriously doing what G-d made them to do. Pa says you can't blame a creature for being the way G-d made it. Scorpions sting, sharks bite, and coyotes sometimes attach livestock or pets. That's the way it is, amen. Unlike people, they're just working on instinct and keeping the Order of the world. 

Sticking to their own, far less complicated, Rules.

Pa believes (or believes when he's in his cups, at least) that most evil in the world, even great evil like war, is stupid because the motivation behind it is moronic. Money, success, land, and even sheer power-- to Jackson Graham, these are foolish goals, because there's always someone nipping at your heels, ready to lop off your head and take your place. He loves The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again' and Creedence's 'Fortunate Son', and he'll crank the radio for them any 'ol time. A man, Pa says, should mind his own business and let everyone else mind theirs. And the old politicos who make themselves into arm-chair generals? (He says this as though he's still under thirty and, sometimes, Will suspects the older man thinks he is. Flashback to a vintage era and all pre-draft.) Well, the bullies of the world will die in their own piss just like everyone else-- King Shit o' Turd Hill. 

 

( _There will come a time, far in a future unfathomable to this small boy, when Will Graham shall wonder just how the concept of Hannibal Lecter would have impacted his father's cosmology. This grown reflection, this profiler and member of law enforcement, will have by then grappled intimately with the being called both the 'Chesapeake Ripper' and the 'Monster of Florence'. A creature of profound misanthropy, a calmly vicious entity that is not an enemy of humanity only because it does not see humanity as a worthy adversary. Others will call this cannibal and murderer the Devil but Will, possessed of his own perpetual affliction, shall understand that such classification is too easy. Like the most sophisticated telescope pointed at a dying star, Will's 'gift' makes him the sole true witness to the void beneath the lacquered shell; evil so divorced from sentient morality as to become some other, far more horrific and alien force. Someday he'll be grateful Pa died long before such exposure could occur._

 _And long before that dying star trapped anything else in its orbit._ )

 

For now, he has a boy's faith in his father's philosophies. It seems Pa must have done and seen everything, and therefore the man's ideals could be no more inflexible than if they were carried down from Mt. Sinai. Will is grateful for the notion of beings only doing what is in their nature.  
_'It's not a sin,'_ he thinks, when the looks get to be too much. When people act betrayed, as though he's peeped in their blinds or rummaged through their things. _'If you can't see the details, the design, then you're blind and that makes me no never-mind._ It sounds mean, and he feels bad about it later, but that small balm of certainty keeps him from lashing out. From drawing attention to himself, which is one of Pa's most oft-repeated sayings: _'If you don't want to get eaten, then don't look like prey.'_

And, far less often, the off-handed aphorism emblazoned on Will's mind in a way Jackson Graham could never have anticipated: _'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.'_

 

_(Is that what you sensed in me, those seeds? That within the good he thought he was teaching me, I was picking up other messages? You, the royal envoy-- destroyer of cities, of self assurance, razing whole cosmologies to the ground?)_

 

The day has warmed and risen to apex by the time Will scampers down from his perch, leaving the unmolested caterpillars to their at once deadly and transformative goal. It seems a shame, in a way-- his first-grade teacher rhapsodized about cocoons and beautiful butterflies, but the adult moths here will lose all their pretty colors. Will shakes his head, trying to banish the thought the same way he turns his back on the tree.

He's near the edge of a clearing caused by the domination of large roots and high canopies, an odd sort of natural plaza. The whole area is dim, weak sunlight discouraging the growth of all but hardy tufts of grass and wild onion. Daisy and Coondog have already picked out the best spot, flopping down in the deep shade between old-growth roots. Will comes to join them, scratching both behind their ears as panting pink tongues pause to lick his cheeks. The animals aren't overheated yet and neither is Will, but they probably shouldn't stay out here all day. Without his watch, the boy judges it to be a little after noon. They have plenty of time to get back and tag along to the pool with Amy-- the neon blue waters and smell of chlorine are particularly appealing to Will right now. He may even have enough change for a popsicle. 

First, though, he'll take a page out of his pack's book and rest. Shimmying back against the tree, Will smiles to see that the large roots are smooth and almost chair-like. An Elf-King would have an awesome throne like this, his whole palace grown from the forest. As Daisy rests her chin on his knee, Will tips his head back but doesn't close his eyes just yet. The problem of the caterpillars is still bothering him somewhat. Nearby, Coondog either snorts or sneezes-- the mutt has such a stubby snout, it's hard to tell. 

"They don't know what they'll become," he says aloud, testing the idea. The golden lab stares up at him with an adoring brown gaze that says she trusts her boy to figure it out. He looks at Coondog. "It's not like you can go back."

The mutt-- a rescue dog-- thumps his sadly truncated tail, blinking at a few stray spots of sunlight. Except Coondog always lookslike he's really giving Will a sly wink, as if to say, _'We both know what _really_ goes on, here.'_ His cynical sniffling and inspection of all new persons balances out Daisy's blind delight when presented with everyone and everything. 

Sighing, Will gives the dog a wry, commiserating smile and closes his eyes. Just for a minute.

 

 

He must sleep, then. 'It _must_ be a dream!', the logical part of his child-mind will insist later. Then, later still, he will not even remember what he saw or the rationalizations he constructed to hold it back. The grown Will, who right now sleeps so uneasily in his borrowed Minnesota bed, is a creature of wood shaped by time and nature into varnished rock-- he doesn't remember, cannot conceive, of a time when he wasn't stone.

The stag comes to him, of course. The emissary of some ruthless and regal other more intimate to Will than his own shadow. A dark companion sewn into the soles of his own feet.

( _He's heard it from tent revivalists, priests, evangelical radio and street preachers alike:'If thy left hand offend thee…'  
'But you can't', Will always wants to reply worriedly, 'just prune people like trees.'_ )

 

Will Graham 'wakes' and thinks _'I know you'_ before he ever sees a thing. Then, as the subtle alterations in the world around him begin to filter through, _'Oh, G-d'_. He is still sitting propped in the shadow of the great tree, hands resting loosely against his stomach. Though he isn't sure, at first, what has awakened him, his small form is already seized by an anxiety that discourages movement.  
Everything around him is… **wrong**.

The change is all the more disturbing because it is so difficult to articulate. The clearing, the tall trees around it, and the clover-dotted grass are all in place; the sky is a cloudless blue and the heat that of a Michigan summer day. Yet Will's animal instinct-- what Pa calls his 'gut'-- recognizes a shift. It is the same hyper-vigilance and palpable atmosphere of a woman forced to navigate a dark alley, or a soldier making a crossing where cover is scarce. The modern portion of the brain will deny the validity of fear in the face of outward order but Will has his own innate senses and the added clarity of childhood, and so he is not fooled. 

Betraying itself with each intangible sense of heightened ornamentation, the dream  
_(oh please be a dream)_  
has also dispensed with Daisy and Coondog. They never wander far, and the boy cannot make out any of their barking dog-song; it seems, in this moment, that they could never have existed at all. This world demands loneliness-- it recognizes no one as alive. Will sits up on his elbows, afraid to move any further. The brilliant sunlight is somehow dark, the foliage behind him luxuriant and mindlessly slavering as it consumes any attempted breeze.

It is beautiful, despite (because of?) its blasphemy. Even the boy, who has had little to no exposure to classical art, recognizes the gorgeous reworking of the world around him. So _close_ to the reality of first glance, yet inherent with new and hideous dimension. His eyes prick hard with tears that are half expectation of punishment. He doesn't call out-- he is, in fact, barely breathing.

He knows he is not supposed to be here.

 

As he levers to a full sitting position, nervously contemplating Pa's tendency to refer to lost items as having 'fallen through the cracks', he feels a light brush against his shoulder. The atmosphere is such that, though he would cry out even at this gentle touch, his fear strangles him to silence. A moment later, the offending item-- a flower-- falls into his lap. Pink, delicate, with petals like five fraying points of a star. It is a cherry blossom, but not one that has ever grown. Will gazes upwards, to find that a construction (the painted _idea_ of a cherry tree) has wrapped itself around the sturdy oak even as he slept beneath it. That the nature of each tree-- one the two-dimensional stylization of a Japanese woodblock, the other honest and real-- should mutually exclude one another has no bearing. They have been _willed_ to coexist in this strange country 

 

_(such things are just and sane, to the mind which rules this land)_

though it drives the rational mind in frenzied and lunatic circles. 

_('Keista… demonas, demonas…'_

_The older boys shout at him-- shout at **them?** \-- in the school yard:_

_'Crazy Will, crazy Will! Daddy can't pay the looney bin bill!')_

 

'Jesus,' the boy thinks despairingly, though that's probably a swear. 'I finally have gone crazy.' 'Finally' hardly applies to going off the deep end before elementary school, but Will has faced questions about sanity of both himself and his father since the day he began stringing simple sentences together. Driven nuts, off to the funny farm, gone looney tunes. Lost it. Both Will and his sanity have gone where all lost things go-- they have fallen into the kingdom between the cracks. As if to reinforce the concept of being marooned amidst this anti-existence, the sunlight around Will darkens. Somehow, it becomes almost thick and resistant, as if the whole of the experience is now trapped in amber. It weighs Will down, extinguishing the ability to flee. 

 

Across the clearing, the unwholesome vegetation parts, almost bowing. Then, with an imperious gravitas that would be comic on any lesser blasphemy, the Stag enters the clearing.

A creature of terrible geometry, it denies validity to any and all who dare stumble into its realm. All shadowy substance, it stands directly across from the boy with the bearing of a predator in full display. Will shudders, wanting to close his eyes and shake his head in denial, but afraid to lose track of the stag for even one moment. This is not a bad dream; it is so beyond the bleak and changeable borders of sleep that even nightmares would flee, looking for less lunatic ground. The forest behind him is full of muffled noises. Without looking, he knows it is the rustling motion of shapeless behemoths, slick with ichor and possessed of too many mouths to scream properly. For all their unseen hideousness, he is not afraid of the gibbering abnormalities that lurk behind him. The stag, he sees with perfect understanding, is the emissary of

_(the king, the king, the one-eyed king)_

one who will never tolerate fear of monsters-- and so it has made itself their sovereign. Working with glacial patience in the shadows outside G-d's sight, this ruler has built a clockwork thing of bone and muscle and vein, blithely breaking every law of decency. The stag's beauty is disarming and horrific, like the last thing seen by one reduced in the next moment to ash and a single atomic silhouette. 

 

Snorting, the beast before him tosses its head and stamps, as if offended by the slightest lapse of Will's full attention. From beneath his own frantically blinking eyelashes, the boy's gaze traces its noble head, where the pelt clings so close yet elegant against the lines of the skull, down along flanks of powerful muscle and feather. The hooves are deep ebony, shining as relentlessly polished obsidian; they match the great antlers, and both gleam with added viscousness as though wet with something unspeakable and acidic. 

With dreamy inevitability, the stag abandons its posing to make its way across the clearing. This approach wrenches a strangled cry from Will, and his paralysis breaks just enough to fling himself back down to bury his face against the roots and grass. 

_'Play dead_ ,' Pa's voice advises. He's always taught Will that wild animals are not to be trifled with. They demand the same respect and caution as guns, which exist in a perpetual state of possibly being loaded. Just as one must always assume a gun is live, it must always be assumed that you are trespassing in the animal's territory. You must be still, be calm.

Though calm is the last thing Will feels, he lets his body go limp. There's a soft rustle as the stag comes closer, pace unhurried. Will knows, in that way of his, that any external curiosity the creature previously evinced was that of a snake-- watchful, waiting. He's seen cats play with wounded birds, and maybe its a little like that. Felines lose most of their interest once their prey dies, but even that involves an investment Will isn't sure this stag is capable of. Kill and rend? Oh, absolutely, world without end, amen. But meaning or memory attached to that slaughter?

"No," Will answers confidently, perhaps channeling the stag. And then much more softly, for himself, "Oh, please no." Despite his resolve to stay still, he covers his ears. That doesn't help, it isn't as if he can silence the understanding. The stag looms over him, blotting out the alien sun. Bending its great head, it noses along Will's back, snorting delicately against the boy's faded t-shirt. After a moment, it moves on to press its nuzzle against the umber riot of curls. 

Will shudders with revulsion, but also with an unexpected _kinship_ that must go unrecognized if his young mind is to remain sane. He'd thought himself at the apex of fear, but the terror coming over him now is acid on innocence-- inherently corrosive to all childhood assumptions about the nature of the world. Not only does it negate the implicit concept of safety, it tauntingly suggests deliberate assault on any sanctuary one might manage to erect. 

Whether he knows it or not, from this moment on William Graham will spend the rest of his life building forts.

 

The stag is not finished examining him. The heavy head wedges under his arm and shoulder, nudging in a relentless attempt to turn him over. At first, Will resists but, when the beast snorts its impatience and scrapes a hoof against the ground, he finally complies. The cataloguing begins again, from the tips of his canvas gym-shoes on up. As the stag noses around his hip, Will recalls the spoils hidden in the pocket of his jean shorts and thinks, with perfect irrationality, 'It wants my blueberries, please just let it want my blueberries.' A hysterical thought; pure nonsense, and Will knows that. This creature is no herbivore, no matter what shape it has assumed. A little petrified giggle escapes the boy, horrifying him to the point he bites his lip bloody as if to take it back. Rearing away a little in surprise, the stag snorts again, dipping to face the insolent trespasser nose-to-nose.

This close, Will can see its eyes are the deep, spilled-blood red of cursed rubies. Ruthless, mercilessly gorgeous, and filling with some emotion even the creature itself seems to find foreign and difficult to identify. For the briefest of moments, Will sees a snowy courtyard before an ancient building, and a boy of sharp comeliness some years older than himself. 

_('He goes to the graveyard,' Will thinks, 'slips away while the others are absorbed in their play. The tombs are topped with sleeping damsels and fearsome angels.' He can picture the boy bending over, tracing smooth marble features, fingers, and folds of stone-carved cloth almost lovingly. He likes the ones already sculpted within their shrouds, women whose beauty is blurred by conquering death. Moved by artificiality as he cannot be moved by authentic_  
\-- it bleeds, how strange that there should be so much in one little body, and see here the yellowy fat--  
flesh.)

Then it's just the stag again, though there will never be anything 'just' about this beast. 

 

"I see you, okay?" Will murmurs, only half-conscious of what he's saying. "I see all of you, so please go away."

It's not enough, though-- a fact the stag quite clearly communicates as it nuzzles Will's cheek. With a speed and dexterity one would never associate with such an animal, it knocks the boy's oversized glasses from his face. Instead of mammalian heat (or even monstrous chill), its breath is perfectly lukewarm. Each of the beast's exhalations smell of overpowering incense, or day-old funerary flowers left out in the sun. This is too much for Will who-- incredibly near-sighted despite his tender age and very protective of his glasses-- promptly rolls on his side to curl up like a pill-bug. 'Rolly-pollies', Pa calls them. The boy moans a little, longing desperately for the generic hotel room, for his dogs, or even the annoying chatter of 'stories' on day-time TV. A few hot tears spill onto Will's cheek though, for all he sees, he cries but rarely. Even when he sliced the tip of his big toe at the docks, he was dry-eyed by the time the first aid kit was brought, and he wasn't squeamish about the blood.

His tormentor seems further intrigued by both the new saline and the blood drying on Will's lip, not to mention pleased with the boy's new position. It begins lowering itself on its haunches beside the human, sphinx-style, pressing bulk of feather and fur against the boy's spine. Its antlers are like black diamonds, reflecting shards of dark starlight onto its chosen companion. More nosing through the boy's curls (it seems to think they can be arranged neatly, somehow), before it switches attention to the dampness on Will's face. The creature's tongue is thick like its animal masquerade, but narrow and forked like a snake's. Agile, the temperature of cadavers and soft as silk, it laps up the tears and blood with reserved delicacy. Then, laying its head and neck across Will's body, it settles in with every attitude of intending to stay a while.

Wil''s terror has ratcheted to the point of religious ecstasy. At first, each point of contact with the beast is freezing-- searing cold with its own little teeth. Holding still requires a constant coil of muscle, and he throbs with the adrenaline sweating from each pore. The stag breathes in-- deep, contented breaths in the manner of appreciating fine cigars, whiskey, or a long-awaited return to sea. The boy's body can only endure the torque of anxiety for so long. Like an engine, Will knows he has been taxed beyond his make. 

As the fight-or-flight response bleeds from Will's brain, it is replaced with exhaustion and a creeping sense of warmth. The stag's touch and weight become a pleasant furnace-- dangerously soothing, filling Will with the odd sense of surrender and embrace a fly must experience during its last moments in the web. It's less (though not completely free of) predation and more that blissful, repellant sense of kinship. They are not the same order of being-- Will and the stag-- and they never will be, but they are both 

_(real, you are the first real creature I have seen since she was swallowed and became naught…)_

of complimentary composition. 

 

This is more of a damnation than every suspicious or accusing glance Will has ever received but, in this precise heartbeat, he can't bring himself to care. A snatch of song occurs to him, scratchy record and deep, smokey voice: _'Did the Devil make the world while G-d was sleeping? You'll never get a wish from a bone…'_ He huffs with bleak amusement, and the stag makes a noise in return that might be taken for commiseration. Will reaches out slowly, laying his hand briefly on its neck where the smooth sheen of feather gives way to lush pelt. The beast will never suffer itself to be petted, so he removes the hand just as quickly. Everything feels hazy, as though he's swimming through wet silk, lost in the unassuming sensuality only a child can know. Closing his eyes, he hears a faint voice humming sedate melody full of mathematical precision-- the proper (Pa says, 'fartsy') old kind of song where it isn't called a 'fiddle', but a violin. 

He drifts into a darkness the exact raven-color of the stag.

 

He will wake, of course, and for the first time know true self-loathing. The summer sun will have returned, along with all the right and decent angles of the world: caterpillars weaving, birds trilling, and every creature in the underbrush going about its appointed task. Daisy and Coondog will be standing over him, sniffing and whining their concern. When he says their names, they will lick him extravagantly-- warm and authentic in a way that denies the dream as much as it denied them. He'll throw his arms around the more tolerant golden lab, and weeps in a way he will never be capable of again. 

The dream is so profound-- so hideous and alluring-- that it _must_ be forgotten. Will has spent his short life instinctively recognizing the dams and shields people build in order to deal with the world; the way they change the story so that their truth will make more sense. So, with dedication that stems from the preservation of sanity, Will employs all he has learned and changes the story he tells himself.

Omission  
( _come now-- 'clinical excision'! the first of many cuts, my good will_ )  
is the only way to go on, because the worst part was never the images that followed him back to consciousness.

 

The worst part is that he _didn't_ wake up screaming. 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Glossary/Notes:**  
>  [+] _keista_ \- Lithuanian. 'Strange, bizarre'.  
> [+] _demonas_ \- Lithuanian. 'Demon'. ;-)  
> [+] "If you don't want to get eaten, don't look like prey." Cribbed from the wonderful Zeb in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam  
> [+] Aspects of Will's dad inspired by Tim O'Brien's _The Things They Carried_ and _If I Die In A Combat Zone_ , as well as Peter Straub's _Koko_. 
> 
> **SONG CREDITS:**  
>  [+] Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969):  
>  _"Some folks inherit star spangled eyes_  
>  Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord  
> And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?"  
> Ooh, they only answer "More! More! More!"  
> [+]Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who (1971)  
>  _"Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss."_  
>  [+]Little Drop of Poison by Tom Waits  
>  _"Did the Devil make the world while G-d was sleeping? You'll never get a wish from a bone."_  
>  (Time-discrepancy here, but I hope you'll forgive me. It's always sounded like a song that could be by Leonard Cohen, anyway… at least to me.)


End file.
